Originally, the “help desk” was the area of an establishment with a desk designated for answering any questions or concerns the customer may have about their experience. This was, and still is, a common practice for hotels or other experience-based services like aquariums or museums. While help desks were great for keeping customers happy about their experience, it is a big expense to have employees onsite at all times to answer customer questions. This can become problematic because there could be a high influx of customer questions at sometimes, while other times could have no traffic at all.
With technology becoming more accessible, anytime and anywhere, businesses moved online to form how modern business is conducted; it is known as eCommerce. Many business operations have moved to an online space where goods or services can be purchased and accessible all over the world. However, when customers have questions, they often have to reach out to the business directly, which can become sloppy if mass quantities of questions appear at once. As a solution, eCommerce businesses have returned again, to help desks; this time, however, help desks have become an industry standard.
A “help desk” became the term used to describe online software that manages an online business’s customer service. The most common way in which it does this is allowing the customer to get a “ticket” which categorizes their question or concern. Using this ticket, the customer can write and submit their problem, then have it entered into the business’s database. It is then sent to the customer service department of the business and they can address the customers question in an organized fashion. If customers ask similar questions regarding a certain aspect of the service, it can be more beneficial to have a “frequently asked questions” section, which addresses these types of questions. Moreover, if customers have frequent concerns about a discrepancy in the experience, the business can prioritize to resolutions to these issues thanks to customer feedback. There are different types of help desks that a business can use to best suit their business; the most common being a web help desk described above. It is important to know which help desk works best with your business. Other forms of help desks can come be:
- On-Premises Helpdesk Software
- Enterprise Helpdesk Software
- Open-Source Helpdesk Software
- Cloud-Based Helpdesk Software
The benefits of using a help desk are it provides an organized avenue to manage customer issues. Helping customers with their questions reliably and swiftly will also increase your customer’s overall satisfaction. Additionally, purchasing a web help desk software won’t hurt your wallet and allows you t be one step ahead with your customers. Although help desks started as a niche method of dealing with customers for experience-based businesses, they have evolved and has become the main way to provide customer support. Today, help desks are now seen as a mainstay in the eCommerce industry.